The Vorlons in the Babylon-5 saga are very secretive. Only two humans ever visited their empire and lived.
Vorlon territory was restricted to other alien species and (almost) every known expedition into Vorlon space failed to return to their respective governments. Much like their First One bret...

Looking for a short story in which a prisoner escapes in his cellmate's shroud, only to be cast overboard in the water by the men rowing the body to shore. Would have been written prior to 1970, was used in an anthology in an English school when we lived in Sweden.

Can anybody explain what's holding up the 5th War against the Chtorr book?
A Rage for Revenge came out in 1993. A Method for Madness, was supposed to be nearing release in 2015. io9 said so. But still. Nothing

If we take a look at palpatine, we can clearly see that he is a sociopath wich means he is unable to have empathy. The light side of the force is powered by positive emotions such as compassion. would it not make palpatine unable to use the light-side of the force

Stargate Atlantis ended after five seasons, but there are currently two storylines that tell the tale of what happened afterwards.
The first storyline was the eight novel series Stargate Atlantis: Legacy, published from 2010 to 2015. In this series, Atlantis returns to the Pegasus Galaxy only t...

I remember that this was a trilogy and that one book cover was red and another was green.
The books talk about this girl who ia retrieved by this sort of knight of a troll court and it turns out that she is the princess that was switched with a human baby.
Her (human) mother always knew that sh...

I'm looking for a juvenile fantasy novel, written in English, with at least a few interior illustrations, which I borrowed from a library sometime in the early-to-mid 1980s. I found it very entertaining at the time, and I'd like to check up on it and see if I still like it today. The problem is t...

i remember this.
the main hero on his quest to free the kingdom from the evil that took over found a teenage girl who had grown up in the forest and can't remember her parents and reluctant to trust people until he convinced her to join with his buddy. (she has a pet) (she wears a green skirt i t...

I read this book +20 years ago.
What I remember is the following:
Someone build a device that in case the water of the ocean rise it would be transported to a bubble in space, and in case the water drops the water from the bubble would flow back to the oceans.
Inside the bubble are also people , ...

The first scene of the movie is presumably set in the immediate aftermath of The Avengers. The movie then fast forwards to '8 years later'.
But Spider Man already appeared in Civil War as a high school student, which he still is in this movie. So what's the timeline here? If Avengers was set in ...

This question got me thinking, about the nature of currency and space.
When Qui-Gon tries to buy ship parts from Watto he gets this response.
Qui-Gon Jinn: I have twenty thousand Republic dataries.
Watto: Republic credits? Republic credits are no good out here.
Why are credits no good...

It was an old anime where 3 teenagers journeyed to help the local area recover from what the evil ruler did to the kingdom. one village they helped an old lady with a farm problem. once when they were travelling to there next destination they were ambushed by the rulers guards (part monsters) and...

The world is split into two realms, that of mortals and fairies(i think), where the fairies are evil and blocked of, but every 50 or 500 years the king can break through for 3 days as a horse to entice a young woman and create an heir, but the women runs away with the child for 17? years and has ...

The story involved a family (single mother) who moves into a new house. It turns out that this house is special and goblin like creatures are trying to get into it because there is a book inside which they want.
The house is protected with a magical barrier and the only way the kids can see the...

(I asked a more verbose version of this question on Sci Fi & Fantasy where it didn't go down well. It seemed to get bogged down in whether or not he Potter verse really is "inconsistent". But I feel it's an interesting topic which might go down better here.)
The Harry Potter books are a ripping ...

About a boy (teenager) who put together an egg-shaped spaceship. A face-less person welcomed him into this “lost (and found)” world where it rained at night and you could do anything except skydive which really bugged the protagonist. They told him this place was limitless (or something) but he f...

I am 80% sure this story is by Sturgeon, but I can't find it (his titles are not very helpful).
The protagonist has a brother or frenemy who is a cadet at a space academy. When the space cadet comes home, he talks constantly in space academy slang ("cool your jets, there, buddy!") to constantly...

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In The Book of the New Sun, the protagonist meets a little boy who bears the same name as him: Severian, usually called "little Severian" in the book to disambiguate.
Little Severian seems to just be a boy who happens to have the same name. It doesn't seem to be a very rare name; it's even menti...

Vague-memory request time:
When I was a kid (around 1992-1996 era)...
...I remember reading a series of books (perhaps a trilogy, possibly more)...
...about these kids (3 kids, perhaps? I'm sure they were siblings, too)...
...who went to an old house (on holiday... I think...) each year...
...w...

Are there any spells that a wizard/witch can cast without a wand in the Harry Potter universe?
This question was "answered" by a post going off on a tangent about soldiers being able to fight without a sword. That post does in no way address the question asked if there are any spells that can be...

In Season of Mists, the fifth book of The Sandman series, in chapter 2, Lucifer explains that rebelled against god, and was cast out of Heaven to Hell, along with his lieutenants.
This version of Lucifer and his fall was inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost (could use a comparison, though)...

I am looking for a children's fantasy book with a tribe of raven or crow people. They actually grew feathers from their skins. A preteen boy fell in love with a regular girl. I'm pretty sure she was Asian but his family kept telling him it could not work out between them. I read this book in 2004...

Growing up on Smallville, I had always assumed Lex Luthor's father had a canon name of Lionel. Recently, Supergirl also featured a Lionel Luthor, which helped to further this belief. Then the linked question happened. Then I started looking at
With addition of a little more research bringing up ...

Serious spoilers for both Series 9 and Series 10 finales.
In Series 10 finale, "The Doctor Falls",
However, in the series 9 finale
What I'm trying to ask is, is The Doctor actually remembering his past companions, or is that just an out-of-universe flashback only meant for us the viewers, ...

I think I am one of three people that was disappointed that Flash Forward did not get a second season. It was not a bad show, and certainly better than a lot of shows that did get past the first season.
Of the many disappointments that I suffered, the most pressing was the mystery of the kangar...

somewhat unrelated, but isn't a "touchstone" an important object or event, the knowledge of which is common among members of a group? Because that's what I thought it was, but it's not defined anywhere as such

I thought it might've been Watchers (1988) as it similarly had a scene involving a barn, but it's not it.
The only other scene I recall from the movie, besides having a scene in a barn, is that there's a scene somewhere--at a police station maybe?--in which the protagonist--some kid--transforms ...

Before Harry, Hermione, and Ron drink the Polyjuice potion during the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione states that the effects will only last an hour.
From an early draft of the script (this scene is in the movie):
Harry and Ron nod, glance at the cauldron. The potion resembles a thick, dark, bu...

Sauron and Gandalf both suffer physical deaths (Sauron at least twice) but do not return to the halls of Mandos for recovery, but Saruman dies and is then impotent, forbidden to return and will never again take form. Melian dies of grief and goes back to Mandos.
So what's the deal? What are the ...

At the end of Chamber of Secrets, after Hagrid returns from Azkaban and Harry gives him a hug, Dumbledore gives him a standing ovation, and soon enough most of the entire hall is up and applauding.
Why is this?
The only thing Hagrid did that year was nearly get Harry and Ron killed by his pet s...

In the latest Transformer movie. One of the bots has a time bubble gun which slows time in the blast radius.
In one scene, megatron was caught in it and then one of the autobots shot a bunch of bullets into it and of course the bullets stops as soon as it enters the bubble. When the bubble is re...

The use of car hairs meant that she didn't transform back after one hour.
Others have made this point but I thought I'd add an answer with the relevant quotations from the books.
There was nothing wrong with Hermione's Polyjuice Potion. Harry and Ron transformed successfully and returned to the...

Just after regenerating, the Eleventh Doctor has a few lines.
DOCTOR: There's something else. Something important. I'm...I'm...I'm...crashing! Ha ha! Woo hoo hoo! Geronimo!
This is from the episode The End of Time: Part Two. This episode was written by Russell T. Davies and indeed was his l...

I remember seeing it in what I think was a collection of sci-fi short stories maybe 20-ish years ago. The only major thing I remember is the early bit where some street kid has really sensitive hearing and can tell the difference between different ultrasonic car keys and tells some adult that he ...

I read this maybe fifteen years ago but got the impression it was a few years older ( well thumbed in an England library).
Plot details I remember :- She lives on another planet ( or parallel dimension) and is part of a team who somehow teleport to Earth to do surveys and such.
Her people ha...

Later in the Lord of the Rings trilogy the forces of Gondor, the elves and Aragorn ect., go up against human mercenaries from distant lands- did the mercenaries have any inkling that they were fighting for a supernatural force, or did they think Sauron was just a rich lord who could afford their ...

Can we clear up this Hagrid thing? So when Hagrid was student, he was expelled, but he didn't get taken to Azkaban, because they decided he didn't do the murder deliberately. Then in Chamber chapter 14, he is taken to Azkaban for the first time in his life, as a "precaution". But when is he taken to Azkaban again? Not in Prisoner, right?

I just mean, she seems like the kind of person who would threaten to throw Hagrid in Azkaban

in year 3 he wasn't put in jail, but he had a trial for Buckbeak. In year 4 he was taking care of the blast-ended-skrewts all year. In Order, he... oh, that's when Grawp was around, right? And the kids had to take care of him, because Hagrid was gone

oh, but yeah, they didn't catch him

so year 6 he was around because his house burned down and Aragog died. In year 7 he was at Hogwarts by May

In "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" the dwarves sneak into town through Bard's toilet. As they're climbing up and out Bard's elder daughter asks, "Dad, why are there dwarves climbing out of our toilet?"
My question is, how would she have known what a dwarf looked like? She would not have be...

This looks like Bob Shaw's "The Ceres Solution" (1981).
A handicapped boy sees a woman disappear. The young woman is an
observer from another human planet, where people live for centuries,
and teleportation is a matter of course. Eventually, they meet, and
both learn secrets about the...

This could've been a tv series, made for tv movie, mini-series, or a movie from theater on tv. It was live-action fantasy. The good guys (I think) had a bow(s) that would bind itself to its user by zapping them on the chest and would scar/brand some sort of pattern there.

I've exhausted all my google-fu over this one.
Short story published during the golden age of sci fi
(Probably) published in either Fantastic Science Fiction or Galaxy Science Fiction
Dialogue is retrospective, explaining all this sequentially except for the begin
.
plot:
Lead character is...

If I remember correctly, each book in the series had a name that starts with "Re", e.g. "Rebellion", "Retribution", "Restitution", "Restoration".
The earth had been invaded by a race of very human-like blue-skinned (or green-?) aliens. These aliens had a matriarchal society (basically all the tr...

In the space battle above Scarif, three rebel attack fighters launch ion torpedoes at a Star Destroyer.
The torpedoes completely disabled the Star Destroyer. They knocked out the engines and the disrupted the energy distribution systems within the ship so badly ...